Heroes of a New World

And you shall be as gods, knowing both good and evil...

Episode 8

Fall of the Four?!

11

OCT/17

The heroes have retired to their personal corners of the world, focusing on loved ones, lives now lost, or individual accomplishments. However, in the shadows a new threat rises.

Maggie gets an email from her brother, from a past she no longer remembers. He wants to catch up with her at a pizza joint in Marion, Ohio. She agrees and begins the long teleporting journey over. Meanwhile, Cazimir spends some quality time with his girlfriend, trying to repair their relationship. She feels like he has changed – little does she understand how much – but the parts of the Mechalus that are still Cazimir feels a loyalty and pain that he cannot describe. Norman, meanwhile, gets a message from a friend that his grandparents haven’t been heard from in quite some time. He runs over to the house in Kansas to find them missing, and a search begins. Adam Cleese sits in his crime lair, waiting for the chance to save the day. The opportunity presents itself right away, with reports of an officer under fire on the South Side, and he runs their to check it out.

Maggie meets her brother, who shares with her pictures of their parents, and the research vessel she was onboard for Xerxes Group. After a long conversation, he invites her back to the family home to try to jog her memory. She agrees, and they walk over. They go down into the basement and she opens a chest of “mementos” in the middle of the room. However, as she does, her brother trips a technological trap on the wall that encases her in a multi-dimensional field, preventing her escape. The young man casts of his disguise to reveal himself as a human-sized mantis creature names Zaxxis, hunter of creatures with dimensional energy. He received a bounty from an unknown buyer who he calls and says the job is done. She tries to contact the other heroes, but to no avail. However, as he tries to harvest Maggie’s energy, she stretches her power and bursts into another world – a barren wasteland of crystal pylons. She isn’t in Kansas anymore…

But Norman is! And he can’t find his family no matter where he looks. Then he gets a message from an unknown source. They say they have a little scavenger hunt for him. If he follows it, then he will get his grandparents back safe and sound. They tell him various locations around the country to travel to, and he realizes he is starting to slow down and get tired. They have done something to his powers! As he follows the sadistic game, he receives Maggie’s message. Despite the warning from his harassers, he runs to Marion to try to help Maggie. He arrives at her family house too late. Both she and Zaxxis are gone!

Adam follows the police dispatch to an abandoned warehouse. A police officer is inside the dilapidated building, badly injured. But as he approaches, the illusion is revealed and the police officer is actual Jean Mougey! She blasts him with ice and he is wounded. She reveals that she has some help this time, as someone gave them the impetus to deal with him once and for all. Catherine Ferdi has illusion powers and uses them to confuse him while Jean blasts him, and a fight rages. Catherine is infuriated that Adam paid attention to all the women but her on the Lachesis! But suddenly, the batshit insane Elaine Shulte joins the fight too, and traps him in an extradimensional null space she can create, just as Maggie’s request for help reaches his communicator!

Cazimir is out with Kristin at the ferris wheel park, when he gets Maggie’s message for help. However, there is no time for that as the ferris wheel explodes and threatens to collapse under its weight as people scream and scramble for safety. He summons Anubis, but as soon as he does, a violet beam of energy lances out at his ship and damages it badly, sending it into the atmosphere. It was a trap. A dragonoid robot, clearly of Imperium make, lands. The pilot identifies herself as Silkana Drost Trkoshvrian and say that Earth is hers. She beats on the suitless Cazimir, who has the Anubis suit ram them both in one last desperate attempt to stop her.